


gunna pass me to that house above

by deadendtracks (amonitrate)



Series: Idiot Prayer [1]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Antisemitism, Beating, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Physical Disability, Post-Season/Series 02, Restraints, Smoking, Whump, antiziganism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-14 18:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18481909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/deadendtracks
Summary: This wasn’t the trenches but it was the closest Alfie’d been to pinned down since he got back, and while Tommy wasn’t exactly a friend, that didn’t make him an enemy, now, did it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vamillepudding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vamillepudding/gifts).



> Dear Vamillepudding, I ended up inspired by elements of all of your requests. I hope you enjoy.
> 
> The tagged antisemitism and antiziganism are brief references.
> 
> Thank you to veneredirimmel for beta!

“Embarrassing, really, this whole thing,” Alfie said to Tommy Shelby’s body. Like some kind of demented schoolboy, he’d already recited aloud every poem he could remember -- which wasn’t many, was it, his memory for verse had been shit since France -- and now he was left with only his unconscious business partner for company. “I’m only saying this because you’re still among the living, mate, if not the awake and aware, but it’s not every day a man is ambushed on the Sabbath, dumped in a root cellar and left to rot with the potatoes.”

Tommy didn’t stir, but Alfie could see the shallow rise and fall of his breathing in the dim light filtering down from the narrow window set near the ceiling.

“Least you could do, right, is keep up your half of the conversation, being as ten to one this entire fucking adventure is due to some shit you’ve pulled on some other unsuspecting, innocent man of business.”

It had been morning when he’d first got here, so that made it at least tea time by now. His leg had already stiffened up, a dull ache settling in the bone, working its way down to the knee. Alfie shifted, smothering a grimace, not that his companion would have noticed. A proper fucking root cellar had a dirt floor, which would have been both warmer to sit on and more of a cushion for his sciatica.

“Your fault, yeah, or one of your thick fucking brothers. Call it a feeling. A suspicion. A fucking intuition.”

So, the current situation: overpowered by a lumbering mob of giants before he could put up a fight, hat and kippah lost in the scuffle, smelly sack shoved over his head and his wrists bound behind his back, then forced into a vehicle of some kind and driven around in what had felt like fucking circles before he’d been led, stumbling, down a stone flight of stairs and shoved to the floor. At least they’d taken the sack with them when they’d gone, but that had left his head bare, hadn’t it. It was a little thing, in the grand scheme of what was adding up to a shit fucking day, but it ate at him nevertheless.

Neither genial cajoling or outright verbal poking of his captors had earned him more than a rough jab to the gut to shut him up, so no information had been forthcoming to explain the circumstances of his abduction. Then he’d been abandoned for what felt like half a day but might have only been a couple of hours, his sense of time stolen from him, though the gold watch still nestled in his vest pocket out of fucking reach. So strike off robbery as a motivation.

He’d had just enough time to run through the list of candidates potentially angry enough at him or his various and sundry business dealings to have gone to all this trouble when the door at the top of the stairs had opened again and a body had tumbled down, hitting the floor with a sick thud that startled a sympathetic wince from him. There the body remained, inert, until the men who’d brought Alfie himself to the cellar had followed, laughing, and hauled the unfortunate lad upright enough so Alfie could catch a glimpse of washed out, angular features and a damp tangle of dark hair.

Alfie understood the inherent compulsion to kick Tommy Shelby’s face in just a bit, didn’t he. So while he wasn’t exactly cheering on the pair of thugs who hauled Tommy farther into the room, shoes trailing, blood drip dripping from his head, Alfie felt a certain kinship with their expressions of frustrated fury. If Alfie himself hadn’t recently received the same sort of treatment from the very same men, he’d have offered a word of commiseration, maybe. Maybe even encouragement.

“Did you check him for grenades?” Alfie asked instead. “A fiend with a fucking grenade, that one.”

As Alfie had recently discovered, more a fiend with an imaginary grenade, since the real thing tended to obliterate any lingering doubts one might have about matters at hand and whether or not your adversary was bluffing. Attention to detail, that was the key to a good con, and Tommy Shelby’s attention to detail was outright pathological, wasn’t it. He’d even thought to bring a fucking firing pin with him. Who could blame Alfie for hedging his bet when up against a man of such commitment to his own fiction? It had been more novelty than Alfie had encountered in months of dreary contract negotiations and endless fucking meetings, so the entertainment value had been worth every percentage point he’d lost to the bluff.

The larger of the two men hesitated. He had a wild cap of red hair and a vaguely familiar accent that placed him somewhere in the vicinity of the Peaky Blinders, but so far they’d resisted Alfie’s attempts at conversation. They dumped Tommy a foot away from where Alfie sat propped against the wall, near enough to touch had Alfie use of his hands. Tommy fell to the floor limp as a sack of wet laundry and stayed that way.

“Got nothing on him,” the second man assured the first, kicking at Tommy’s shoulder for emphasis. He sprawled loosely onto his back, face slack and smeary red all down one side, like a kid had got at him with paint.

“Tie his hands,” the taller one ordered.

Alfie pulled at his own wrists, secured behind his back. “Why bother, yeah?” he asked. “Not like he’s going anywhere any time soon, mate, by the looks of him.”

While not particularly gentle with Alfie himself, their handling had been impersonal. Whoever they were they had it in for Tommy. Fuck. Wouldn’t be much help in any kind of hurry, would he, even if he did eventually wake up. Now Alfie would have to factor in both Tommy’s presence and his likely level of incapacitation into any as yet unformed escape plans.

The men ignored Alfie and squatted next to Tommy, yanking his arms behind him and winding a length of rope around his wrists. Then they left him where he was, awkwardly curled on his side, the bare crown of his head inches from Alfie’s knee, and stalked from the room. The door slammed behind them.

“Well now,” Alfie had said. “Here we are, mate. Wherever the fuck here is.”

 

Silence did things to a man’s mind, Alfie knew this well enough, which was why he’d started in on the verse, but eventually he ran out of things to say. In an attempt to annoy Tommy into consciousness he’d called him a coward, which he clearly wasn’t, then a conniving bastard, which fit the bill. Then he’d launched into a longish discourse on how to tell paste from diamonds, which you’d think would have been fucking obvious, but people kept bringing the cheap shit into his shop -- well, his cousin’s shop these days, really, Alfie hadn’t had much time for his original vocation since the war, what with the races and the distillery to look after -- but the point, the fucking point, remained.

But Tommy hadn’t moved for the first few hours and Alfie’d carefully avoided thoughts of everything that could go wrong inside a busted up skull, which got harder to keep up as his voice faded. So he’d shut his mouth and started work on rubbing the rope around his wrists against the rough brick behind him, hoping to at least weaken the bonds. As far as he could tell by what little he could feel with his fingers, that operation would keep him occupied for a good week’s time. By then he’d be dead of fucking boredom, though, wouldn’t he.

Alfie had just taken a break from the effort when he heard Tommy’s breathing hitch, so he shifted best he could and nudged the other man with his knee.

“Oi, Tommy.” Tommy’s eyes moved aimlessly beneath the lids at the sound of his name. “Wake the fuck up. We’ve got ourselves a situation here, which as I said earlier, has to be at least partially your fucking responsibility, things being how they are for a man with your sordid history.”

Tommy mumbled thickly, then coughed. Purple-black rings had already started to rise under his eyes and blood still leaked out of his swollen nose in a sluggish stream, dripping from his chin to the stone floor.

“Think they broke your nose, mate.” Probably unnecessary, but it was something to say.

“Zha ka o beng,” Tommy slurred.

“Sure,” Alfie agreed. “That about sums it up.”

Tommy’s shoulder twitched, which was probably him trying to move his arm, which was still twisted and secured behind his back. “Fuck,” he said, clearer that time, and in fucking English. Then: “What... what time is it?”

“Not sure the time is the most relevant bit about the situation,” Alfie said, “but I have no fucking idea.”

Tommy’s eyes cracked open and he blinked, face screwed up with an obvious confusion that Alfie was certain he’d have hidden had he been more himself.

“Solomons?”

“Yeah. Well, one would think we’d be on a first name basis given we’ve taken up residence in this fine cellar together.”

Tommy’s shoulder jerked again and this time he managed to lift himself off the floor a couple of inches out of sheer doggedness before dropping again, eyes pressed shut.

“Oh, forgot to mention, our hosts left us both trussed up like a couple of geese, so I wouldn’t--” Tommy ignored him and forced himself upright, only to topple over a moment later, landing on Alfie’s knee. “--do that if I were you.” At least it hadn’t been his bad knee.

“Fucking hell,” Tommy muttered, his voice muffled and nasal courtesy of the broken nose. He didn’t seem to have the strength to shift himself off of Alfie’s leg and Alfie didn’t have the heart to shove him back to the floor, though when he saw the blood soaking into his trousers he was fucking tempted.

Alfie left him alone to absorb their current circumstances and returned to working at wearing down the rope around his wrists.

 

“Good thing, yeah, anyone who likes horses as much as you do must have a thick fucking skull to begin with.”

Tommy had eventually mustered the wherewithal to lever himself upright, which had been something of an ordeal to witness, but of course Alfie had done the noble thing and refrained from commentary during the proceedings, nor when Tommy had scooted backwards until he could slump against the brick wall, utterly fucking spent from his labors. After a few minutes recovery he had sniffed delicately. The nosebleed had nearly dried up before he’d got it into his head to perform the contortion act required to make it to his current location, and a fresh torrent of blood was the reward for his efforts. His starched collar was spattered with red and a spreading blot of gore stained the front of his fine pressed shirt until it looked like he’d taken a bullet to the chest. Alfie found himself staring in fascination. How much blood could leak out of one man’s nose, anyhow?

“Not sure I follow,” Tommy said, which was a hell of a concession for a man of his nature. His eyes were closed and under all the red and rusty brown he’d gone ashen.

“All that bouncing in the saddle must jostle your brains, mate. So you’re used to it by now, yeah, and a little tumble down the stairs leaves you no worse for wear.” From the careful lack of reaction, Tommy’d missed out on his rendezvous with the stairs, or the knock to the head at the end of the journey had erased it for him. It was too dim to get a good look at his pupils, but at least he was staying conscious and responding in English now, rather than whatever tongue he’d started off in. Which reminded him. “Earlier, was that Gypsy you were speaking?”

Tommy opened his eyes. They’d gone pebble-hard and suspicious and underneath all that business was a glint of bewilderment. “Earlier?”

“When you first joined me in the land of the verbal, mate, you said something like _zakka obang_. Maybe it was your scrambled brains, but it sounded like you meant it.”

“We don’t… that's your word for us.”

It was a shock the utterance didn’t crystallize in midair when it left him, the atmosphere around him had gone so cold. Alfie was genuinely thrown, which he should be getting used to by now in his interactions with Tommy Shelby, but somehow still never fully anticipated.

“My word for what?”

Like he was chewing through leather, every syllable a sharply cut off bite: “I don’t speak fucking ‘gypsy’ any more than you speak--”

“Whatever it is you was thinking of saying, don’t even fucking--”

“So you object, you fucking object when it comes to yourself, but then you go ahead and do the same fucking thing.” His chin had lifted into a hostile angle so he could stare down his nose at Alfie. Would have been more intimidating, right, without all the swelling.

Oh. _Oh._ Sabini’s insistent antisemitism was at least half the reason Alfie’d accepted Tommy’s original business proposition in the first place, preposterous and presumptuous as it had been. Fuck.

“Alright, alright, mate, I apologize for the slur upon your people and your sacred fucking heritage." He said it sincerely, but Tommy continued his particularly accurate impersonation of the stone wall behind him, only more pissed off. "So what do you speak, then?”

“English, mostly. A little French if I have to.” After another moment the stiffness deserted Tommy as if he couldn’t maintain it any longer, and he sank against the wall again. “Romani. A bit of Shelta, though I’ve lost most of it.”

Alfie had no idea what the fuck Shelta was, but he’d at least heard of Romani. “Sounded like you called my mother a thieving dog. A man can’t sit back and just let something like that lie, even if he is currently hobbled, not if the dear memory of his mum means anything to him.”

That earned him a weary lift of one corner of Tommy’s mouth. “Nothing so slanderous as that. Zha ka o beng, if I’ve understood your butchery. Go to hell.”

“Well,” Alfie said. “We’re already there, ain’t we. So as a curse it’s a little wanting.”

Tommy hummed an agreement and swallowed, an obvious wave of nausea passing over him, then he coughed a little, wincing. As much blood as was running down his face, more was likely trickling down the back of his throat. At least that had been Alfie’s experience last time someone had bashed him in the nose; a nasty time he wasn’t in any hurry to revisit.

“How many languages can you curse in, then?” Tommy asked finally, clearly searching for a distraction rather than out of any real interest.

“Hrm. Well, I like to collect a good curse when I find it, so if we limit the question to just cursing, right, upwards of twenty. Anything more than cursing, the field narrows, as it were.”

“Narrows to…”

Alfie had his own reflexive moment of distrust, then shrugged. “Proper London English, which varies considerably from your degraded Brummie patois, mate. German, Hebrew, Russian. Enough French to get by should I ever find myself stranded in that infernal country again. A smattering of Italian, which comes in handy when Sabini thinks he’s clever.”

Tommy raised a brow, though Alfie couldn’t decide if he was impressed or making a poor attempt at mockery. Hard to tell the difference in a face like that, and all the blood didn’t help. The blood was distracting; it felt a bit unbalanced, didn’t it, conversing with someone who looked like he’d just come out the wrong side of a prize fight against, say, an enraged elephant.

“So,” Alfie said finally. “Before I was graced with your esteemed presence, mate, I assumed this interruption of my busy schedule was all your fucking doing. But unless you’ve dedicated yourself to an entirely new and elaborate form of theatre, I can eliminate that possibility, yeah?”

“Safe to say.” A slim hint of a smile that time, rueful as it was.

“Well, then, while I was contemplating your battered carcass, I thought it must be Sabini, getting back at us for screwing him over at Epsom. But unless he’s taken to hiring out, none of those lads were Sabini’s.”

“Which leaves…”

“Your fucking guess is as good as mine. You remember how you got here?”

Tommy’s stare went decidedly opaque, which most likely meant he didn’t have a fucking clue. Which wasn’t the best sign in a man who’d been clobbered about the head, but there wasn’t shit Alfie was able to do about that, was there.

 

Eventually the sun went down and plunged the cellar into night, the faint trickle of light from the street only enough to make out the vague shape of Tommy Shelby propped against the wall next to him, dark against dark. Before the view had been snuffed out it had looked like the nosebleed had finally stopped, but as time went on Shelby’s usual clipped tone had softened around the edges like steel in a forge, and then started to blur as if he’d been at the whiskey. Somewhere around midnight by Alfie’s reckoning he lapsed into unnerving quiet any time Alfie failed to ask him a direct question, then not long after it became hit or miss whether he responded at all. So provocation seemed the most logical route available in the face of the obstacles at hand.

“This must be fucking familiar for you at least,” Alfie said, trying to discover a less painful position on the hard stone floor. The distant hum he got in response meant Tommy was at least still conscious, so Alfie went on. “Stuck in the dark underground, I mean. You must be right at home, yeah?”

Tommy cleared his throat. “My office is above the ground floor,” he said, sounding a little more focused than he had for the past hour, “unlike your own.”

Alfie had never been to Birmingham, let alone to whatever presumably posh place of legitimate business Tommy Shelby kept there, and he meant to keep things that way. His was a London operation and anyone foolish enough to exist outside of that civilized sphere could fucking come to him. But if Alfie had to bet, he’d put good money on the fact that Shelby Company Limited wasn’t headquartered in any basement. That hadn’t been what he’d been referring to and he knew Tommy knew that, knew exactly what he’d meant. If a man was willing to use his burial under a shitton of earth during the war as a set piece for a fucking bluff, he could stand to be prodded about it in polite conversation while incarcerated with his mark.

“Hmm, I don’t suppose you happen to have an actual grenade on you this time, mate, in addition to the pin.” Alfie knew full well he had fuckall on him, but it dragged things back to his original point, which Tommy had so neatly sidestepped.

Tommy was silent long enough Alfie thought maybe he’d passed out again. Then, with an edge that hadn’t been there since Alfie’d asked him about his mother tongue: “No, no grenade this time.”

So, target hit, but still no return fire.

“Pity.” Alfie shifted again, and this time a soft grunt escaped him at the jolt of pain that ran through his thigh and straight up his back. The sun had taken what little warmth had been left in this hell hole, and now Alfie had the cold to add to his inventory of discomfort.

Another extended silence, and then a question floated out of the dark, disembodied and detached, like the words were materializing in the air rather than spoken. “Will you be able to walk out of here, should the opportunity present itself?”

Heat flooded Alfie. “What kind of fucking question is that?” He’d kneecapped men for less.

“A realistic one.”

“Calculating the odds, are you? Calculating the fucking odds?”

“Answer the fucking question, Alfie.”

“What about yourself, mate? Can you stand without the room fucking spinning on you like a whirligig?”

“Probably not.” No reluctant admittance, that, just dry fact with a pale undercurrent of hilarity Alfie would have smacked him for, had he use of his hands, had his cane not been lost somewhere between Camden Town and wherever the fuck they’d ended up.

In this business any weakness was to be concealed or fucking eliminated before it could be exploited by friends and enemies alike. But in France the ones who had hidden infirmity had endangered every man around them. This wasn’t the trenches but it was the closest Alfie’d been to pinned down since he got back, and while Tommy wasn’t exactly a friend, that didn’t make him an enemy, now, did it. Alfie supposed present circumstances had landed them in the third category, the one the war had forced men into whether they wanted it or not.

Alfie let out a laugh, because the entire situation was ridiculous, wasn’t it. It was. It was fucking ridiculous, and humorless as his usual countenance made him appear, maybe Tommy Shelby had beat him to the realization. “Right. Right. Should the opportunity fucking present itself, I will drag this creaky vessel as far as it needs to go, yeah? But it won’t be quick.”

Tommy didn’t return the laugh -- Alfie wasn’t altogether convinced laughter was a state the man was naturally capable of achieving -- but Alfie could sense his nod of acknowledgement in the dark.

“Not that there’s any immediate chance of that happening,” Tommy said, mild as a fucking shopkeeper.

“No,” Alfie agreed. “Whoever those blokes were, they got their money’s worth with this rope, mate, didn’t they.”

“That they did,” Tommy said. “That they fucking did.”

 

A bit later Alfie was roused from a near doze by the rhythmic rustling of cloth, viciously suppressed, then it started again, quiet-like. Shivering, probably, because Tommy Shelby had far less in the way of meat on his bones than Alfie himself, and it was fucking freezing in this cellar. In the trenches they’d shed all shame of huddling together like a pile of puppies for warmth, but that had been with men you’d faced down Jerry with, and besides, your hands had been free.

“So you blew Schwabenhöhe, did you?” Alfie asked, after the muted shaking next to him gained a poorly muffled clack of teeth.

Silence met the question, because the man never seemed to speak without considering twenty-nine alternative fucking responses and what they might mean for his strategy at hand. Or maybe his words were rationed and if he ran out of that day’s allotment he lost the ability to communicate at all. It drove Alfie to distraction, the waiting, because his impulse was to fill any extra space with noise, but knowing that about himself didn’t make it any easier to bear these damnable pauses.

“Yes,” Tommy said, finally, and then nothing else. Any other man would have taken the opportunity to expound upon the question, to tell the tale, yeah? Maybe even to embellish it a bit, if only to pass the time and keep himself warm.

“I read they heard that blast in fucking London.”

Tommy made a noncommittal sound, but at least his teeth had stopped jittering together in the way that set Alfie’s own on edge.

“What’d you use, ammonal? Not fucking grenades, I know that much.”

“Yes, ammonal, mostly.”

“Three days, you said, right? Before you dug yourself out?”

Tommy shifted against the wall and an unsteady breath escaped him, but when he spoke again he was as terse as ever. “Didn’t say, far as I recall.”

A _fuck off_ if Alfie had ever heard one. It had been three days; Alfie had found clippings on the tunnel collapse in the library, Sergeant Major Thomas Shelby’s name listed in stark newsprint among the survivors. At least that much of his con had been fact.

“So what did you do to pass the time, then?”

The rustling ceased. “What do you think we fucking did?”

Anger warmed a man just as well as anything else, Alfie supposed. Careful measures of air whistled in and out of that crushed nose, but nothing else seemed forthcoming, so Alfie let him keep his silence this time.

Later, much later, Tommy spoke from the shadows, voice like gravel. “The Italians were our allies, you know.”

Alfie couldn’t stop a grin, even if it was hidden by the dark. “Were they, now?”

“Hmm. So was it a personal grudge, then?”

“Suppose it was, suppose it was,” Alfie mused. “Who’s to say now, mate, all that time gone past.”

“Right.” There was a dry sound that might have been as close to laughter as Tommy Shelby ever came. “All that time.”

“Ancient history, now, ain’t it.” Alfie couldn’t feel his hands or toes, and his bad leg was a solid length of pain. “S’like none of it happened, you ask kids today. A bedtime story they read once and forgot.”

“Envious of them, eh?”

“Envious? Nah, mate, not envious.” Envy was a petty thing, wasn’t it. Envy was for parlors, for the bedroom. Envy couldn’t expand large enough to encompass everything that had been France. “You?”

“Not sure envy applies to the situation,” Tommy said, echoing Alfie’s own thoughts, but Alfie found he couldn’t read the tone at all.

“No,” Alfie said. “I don’t suppose it does.”


	2. Chapter 2

Dawn crept into the cell and Alfie jolted from an unlikely slumber to find Tommy Shelby’s blue gaze fixed on him, blank and still, corpse-cold. Just as a primitive foreboding that he’d gone and died in the night ran like a chill through Alfie, Tommy blinked, the muscles of his face shifting into something a little more in the realm of the living, if disgruntled.

Alfie's breath rushed out in a puff he refused to acknowledge as relief and then floated around his face in a fog from the cold, expanding as he spoke. “Lovely morning we’re having.”

The night hadn’t done Tommy any favors; he was puffy under the eye sockets and across the bridge of his nose and where he wasn’t fish-belly pale, shaded purple to green beneath the crust of blood.

“If you say so.”

“I do, I do. Any morning a man wakes still breathing in this hellish world is a lovely one, ain’t it, now.”

The only acknowledgement he got was a watered down glare. Alfie would have pegged Tommy as one of those fucking morning people, bright-eyed and motivated at some ungodly hour, but perhaps that required sleep, preferably in a place less bleak than an echoing stone-floored cellar, and involving far less in the way of bindings.

He couldn’t bite back the wince this time when he tried to shift his legs. Tommy’s eyes flickered over him in cool evaluation and something about the lack of expression got Alfie’s dander up. Before he could produce a suitably scathing distraction, there was a rattle above their heads from the direction of the locked door.

Tommy squared his shoulders and straightened best he could, hauling himself around so he could face the staircase.

“About time,” Alfie grumbled.

He was still looking at Tommy and not at the door as it opened on their captors, so he caught the quicksilver flash of fury and dismay that swept him before he could quite pack it away. So, wasn’t that interesting; looked like this would turn out to be Shelby’s fault somehow after all. Only question was how Alfie’d got mixed up in the mess.

“Harry Kitchen,” Tommy drawled, and how he managed to pack that much belligerent distain into four syllables, his face looking the way it did, was something to be admired, wasn’t it.

Then Alfie’s brain caught up to the name. Kitchen. Right. Shit. _Shit._

Kitchen -- brother or cousin, presumably, to the late Billy -- bounded down the stairs and landed a kick in Tommy’s gut. A grunt escaped him as he doubled over. Another kick and Tommy collapsed to his side on the floor, coughing.

“Well,” Alfie said, “Isn’t this awkward. Shoulda known, all that ginger.”

Which, of course, bought him his own well-aimed kick.

By the time he’d pried his eyes open, Kitchen and the other ginger brother-or-cousin had Tommy dangling between them by the scruff, shoes scrabbling on the stone. Alfie couldn’t see what they was doing to him but it produced an ugly sound somewhere in the vicinity of a strangled wheeze, like a steam engine on its last legs.

“Are all Kitchens built on a Samsonian scale, or what, mate?” Alfie forced out past the lingering rock in his gut. “Seems unlikely, statistically speaking, innit. Maybe the rest of you blokes are Lilliputians, in which case I only have to worry about being swarmed--”

The pair dropped Tommy and loomed over him, Harry kicking at his leg. The good one. “What’d you call my brothers?”

Behind them, Tommy was curled in on himself, gasping, and there was fresh blood splattered on the floor.

Alfie cocked his head. “Lilliputian. From Mildendo, right? But you lot, you’re Brobdingnagian if I ever saw one.”

Tommy let out something that might have actually been real laugher if it hadn’t been so close to a choke.

Kitchen’s face screwed up, gone as red as his hair. “What’d you just fucking call me?”

“He called you a giant.” Breathless but buoyed by scorn, Tommy had managed to lift himself to his knees, half off the floor, unbalanced by his bound arms. “It’s only an insult if you boys regret your substantial… height advantage.”

Maybe Kitchen didn’t believe him, or maybe anything Tommy said at that point would draw his apparently bottomless ire, but he busied himself with his boots for the next few moments, until the other pulled him off.

“Harry, leave him. We won’t get anything for him if he’s fucking dead, will we.”

Harry Kitchen stared down at the body at his feet -- gone limp again -- and spat. “Fucking pikey.” Then the two Kitchens tramped back up the stairs.

“Oi!” Alfie called as they reached the door. “If this is a ransom deal, could you speed up the fucking proceedings just a bit? If you need advice on how to get things done in a prompt and efficient fashion, I’d be more than happy to offer--”

The door slammed.

Fuck.

Tommy had landed on his side again, facing away from Alfie, so it was impossible to tell whether he was conscious or not. He was breathing at least, in noisy, hitching pants, so that was something.

“Curious thing, innit,” Alfie said. “They’ve taken a particular interest in you, when I’m the one had their brother killed.”

He hadn’t expected an answer, but after a moment Tommy stirred, the fingers of his tied hands spasming.

“Is that supposed to be an apology?” It came thinly, and slurred. Then before Alfie could muster any kind of retort, “I brought Billy to you, and I’m still in business with you after you murdered him. You might understand how that would look to them.”

“Hrm. Thought it was generally known your brother killed Billy Kitchen in a fit of rage.”

Tommy didn’t reply. He stayed where he’d been dropped, did Tommy, for the next few hours. Every so often he’d jerk with a cough, but for the most part he was poor company, and Alfie couldn’t tell if he’d passed out or fallen asleep or was just ignoring him out of a peevish sort of retaliation. It was late afternoon before he roused, dragging himself upright and shuffling backwards until he could lean against the wall again.

“Judging by the extended span we’ve spent here in this cell, our kidnappers don’t appear to be very practiced, do they.” Alfie commented after Tommy’d caught his breath.

“They’re coal miners and steelworkers and petty thieves.” The corner of Tommy’s mouth had split and his right eye was swollen shut and there were new bruises under his jaw the size and shape of Kitchen’s goliath-like fingers.

“Why not take their revenge on your brother, hmm?” Alfie couldn’t feel his bad leg much any longer, which was either a worrying development or a good one, depending on your perspective. His other leg, however, still throbbed where it had been kicked. “Over and done with, none of this trouble.”

“There’s no profit in killing Arthur.” Tommy pulled his own legs up to his chest best he could, huddled against the brick. It was warmer than the stone floor, Alfie’d give him that much.

“So they’ve captured the General and think the troops will pay to have him returned?”

“Something like that.”

“Those boys don’t strike me as the best-served-cold type. Or the kind to dream up the elaborate sort of plan required for snatching two men of reputation such as ourselves off the streets with no fuss.”

“Are you looking for me to correct their misunderstanding with regards to Billy’s demise?” There was something giddily amused brewing underneath the flat question, and Alfie wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, given said misunderstanding had just won Tommy a beating. The man had only been whole one of the three times their paths had crossed, so maybe bruised and bleeding was his usual state.

“Would they believe you?”

“Joe Kitchen saw you in action that day at the bakery, with your bloody cane. It wouldn’t take much convincing.” Tommy’s swollen face cracked into a death’s head grin, exposing the fresh blood between his teeth.  “Besides, we’re countrymen, served together, and you’re a Londoner.”

“Hmm.” Alfie tipped his head back, trying to stretch the cramping out of his neck. The muscles of his shoulders and back had seized up in protest of the situation, not that he blamed them for it. He’d like to register a complaint himself. “Who’re they even expecting to ransom me, Ollie? He’d laugh them out of Camden Town.”

Honest truth was Ollie would most likely overreact, because Ollie fell to little pieces under pressure, but Alfie didn’t need to go mentioning it, now, did he. Ollie was a good lad. Meant well, but the war had shattered his nerves, hadn’t it. Needed a firm hand, Ollie did. Ollie panicked leaned on the side of caution, which wasn’t always detrimental, though whether caution was what this situation required was still up in the air. Too much caution and he and Tommy Shelby were liable to be left to moulder like a stack of forgotten books.

Tommy’s working eye had closed, but a layer of humor lingered like a glaze atop all the bruises. “I suspect that may be the delay. Not known for strategy, the Kitchen clan, more for crimes of opportunity. At least when it comes to nicking booze off our barges.”

“And what about you?”

One of Tommy’s brows lifted in a curious arc.

“Who’d they go to, you think, for ransom? That aunt of yours, Lady MacBeth?”

All trace of camaraderie vanished between one breath and the next. Tommy’s eye, when it opened, had gone narrow and chilly.

“Yes, I know about your fucking aunt. And your sister, on Primrose Hill. And the kid brother who runs the streets of your fucking city in a pack of feral Lost Boys. It wasn’t a threat, Thomas, it was a question.”

“You’ve done your research.”

“Like to know who I’m dealing with, don’t I, especially after they show up to my place of business promising to blow us all to Greenland.”

“My brother was going to hang.”

And there it was. “Will he do the same for you, is my concern, here, Tommy. Or will he fuck things up and get us both killed?”

Whatever else in the way of feeling passed over that stoic face, there was a well-hidden but faint trace of doubt. “If they take this to Arthur, he’ll go to Polly before he does anything.”

“You certain of that? He won’t fly off the handle, say, and slit those Kitchen throats, elevated as they are, before anyone discovers where they interred our bones?”

“He dug for three days,” Tommy said, softly. “Three days without stopping.”

“And it was him who reached you, in the end?”

The silence this time was a physical thing, the vacuum of sound after a shell burst over your head. Alfie waited, but no shrapnel seemed forthcoming.

Didn’t mean he relaxed.

 

Every prod and provocation Alfie sent Tommy’s way was met with a great load of nothing, like he hadn’t even spoken, like he’d ceased to fucking exist. Seemed this time Tommy was determined to ignore him for the duration of their residence in the cellar, which for all either of them knew, might well be fucking permanent. Lucky for Alfie’s patience it ended up being not so long at all, because round about dinner time -- the second dinner he’d missed, as the gnaw of hunger had plenty of opportunity to remind him, free of distractions as he was -- there came a sudden ruckus above them. Tommy’s head shot up tense as a hunting dog, following the stomps and shouts and muffled spray of gunshots as it progressed towards the top of the stairs.

Then there was a much louder boom and the door rattled on its hinges and before Alfie could do more than blink Tommy had bolted to his feet and put himself bodily between Alfie and the staircase.

Alfie gaped at him. “What in the fucking hell do you think you’re--”

The door burst open and a pair of men scrambled through, pistols raised, neither of them blessed with the Kitchen genes, judging by their modest heights and distinct lack of ginger. The one in the lead flicked the overhead light on and then raised his hand to the man behind him, who shouted something indecipherable back through the door.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Tom,” the first man said, and holstered his weapon. “What happened to your face?”

The second, shorter bloke stared down at Alfie, narrow-eyed and watchful. “Kon si kako, Tommy?”

“This is Alfie Solomons,” Tommy answered, still squinting against the sudden brightness. “Fellow guest of the Kitchens.” Then, to the first man: “Where’s Arthur?”

Struggling with hostile confusion at his recognition of Alfie’s name, the first man stared down into the cellar with a blank sort of cockiness, ready for action but clearly unsure which direction to aim it.

“John,” Tommy barked, “Where the fuck is Arthur?”

“This the fucking rescue party?” Alfie muttered from his place on the floor, because yeah, he definitely couldn’t stand on his own, and while this reunion of Shelby brothers was touching and all, he was starting to feel like a sack of shriveled turnips left discarded in the alley for the rats.

Whatever answer to Tommy’s demand might have been forthcoming was interrupted by another wave of fighting above them. John Shelby and the other bloke drew their guns again and Tommy was already halfway up the stairs, unarmed and useless in a fight but determined to get in the way anyhow. Maybe he was planning to charge any Kitchens he might meet with his skull like a ram.

He didn’t get far enough to try.

“John--” Tommy was driven back again, reeling and unbalanced by his bound hands, as a new horde of men pushed into the doorway and forced John Shelby and his leftenant down the stairs.

“Right,” Alfie sighed. Because the shouting men now occupying the top of the stairs were his own, guns out and aimed at heads of the the Shelby crew.

The two parties scuffled for dominance of the narrow doorway while Tommy stumbled backwards down the stairs, banged up face drawn with about as much weary frustration as Alfie suspected must be on his own. Fuck, but he was tired. Then there was a lively exchange of curses in at least three languages while he and Tommy waited out the standoff, which had remained wholly oblivious to either of their shouted objections.

“John,” Tommy ground out finally, once a panting lull fell over the two groups of men, “Put the fucking guns away. Those are Solomons’ men. They’re here for the same reason you are.” Then he turned to Alfie as if expecting some kind of reinforcement.

“Yeah, alright,” Alfie said to himself. Then: “Eli, call off the calvary, mate. Call ‘em off, we’re all friends here, ain’t we.”

John Shelby hesitated and then at a sharp look from his brother did as he’d been ordered, and the other Shelby man followed suit. Eli and Danny behind him took longer to fall in line, but then Alfie supposed they’d had less time to adjust to the situation.

The man with John Shelby had a switchblade out and was already hacking at the ropes that bound Tommy’s hands. When they finally gave Tommy staggered a little and the man steadied him, the bald concern in his eyes at odds with his light tone. “Kind of you to offer yourself up as a punching bag for those Kitchen boys, Tom. I hear they could use the practice.”

Tommy ignored him and turned to his brother, one track mind still intent on his original question. “Where’s Arthur?”

Alfie was fucking done with being loomed over. “Tommy, while I’m sure your brother’s whereabouts are vitally important to the proceedings, if you wouldn’t mind--”

Tommy whirled on him, the marred lines of his face set with sudden fury. “He’ll fucking kill you on the spot. If you’d like to prevent that, I suggest--”

“Unlikely, mate. First he’d have to make it through Eli there, and Dan and the other lads they’ve got with them, and I assume you yourself wouldn’t just stand aside and--”

“I just might,” Tommy bit off, “I just fucking might--”

“Oh?” Alfie scoffed. “So just now when you playacted a toff’s fucking bodyguard and put yourself in front of the action, that was you--”

“Oh my fucking God,” John Shelby broke in finally, his face cracked with a horrified delight at the entire scene. “Tommy, Arthur’s not here, he’s not bloody here, he’s got Harry Kitchen hostage at Charlie’s yard until he knows we got you back.”

Tommy turned to the man who’d freed him. “Johnny, give me your knife.”

Eli and Daniel, who had the looks of men who’d lost all patience with the situation, took the initiative and pushed on past John Shelby just as Tommy started towards Alfie with the blade in his hand. So they might have taken it in the wrong sort of light, and as on edge as everyone was, who could blame them? Before Alfie could say shit to defuse matters, Eli’d started to grab at Tommy, who reacted about as well as any hard man who’d spent five years in France and then been tied up in a cellar for two fucking days, which meant he’d smashed Eli’s nose with the heel of one hand and shoved the knife up against his neck with the other in the blink of an eye.

“Tommy,” Alfie said, as a lit-fuse silence fell over the assembled men, “I dunno about you, mate, but the only blood I’m interested in seeing tonight is from the fucking cow that was slaughtered to provide the steak that’s waiting for me should we ever reach the outside of this fucking cellar.”

Eli had gone pasty and Danny looked liable to shoot the next person who spoke, Alfie included. John Shelby eyed his brother like he wasn’t sure whether he shouldn’t let Tommy slit as many throats as would satisfy his temper.

“Tom,” the man who’d come with Shelby, the one Tommy’d called Johnny, stepped forward with his hands loose at his sides. “Arthur, he’s waiting for our call, eh?”

Tommy shoved Eli back a step and turned to Alfie. “You want out of those ropes or fucking what?”

Which was how it ended up that Tommy Shelby was the one who gave Alfie his hand and levered him off the cellar floor while everyone else fucking watched. Then Tommy ordered his men to wait for them outside, which they heeded, shooting him dubious glances the entire way up the stairs. That left Alfie’s own men, who Tommy flat ignored.

Alfie didn’t know what the fuck Tommy was even doing, standing there with his bruised wrists and bruised face and throttle marks still livid on his throat, until he realized he was waiting for Alfie himself. Because Alfie was still propped against the wall where Tommy had left him. Because yeah, okay, he was upright now, but that didn’t mean he was going anywhere soon under his own power.

“Eli, mate, many thanks, but fuck off. Need to have a few words with Mr. Shelby, here.”

Eli gave Tommy a suspicious once-over and obviously considered taking his revenge for the blow to his nose, but at Alfie’s glare just muttered to himself and followed Danny and the others from the bakery up the stairs. Where Alfie knew full well he’d wait for Alfie to appear, but at least he was out of the way of the temptation to restart the completely unnecessary if understandable hostilities towards Tommy. Beat to hell as he was, Alfie still put the odds in Tommy’s favor.

“Right,” Alfie said, once they were alone, his leg just starting to shriek at him from the delayed return of circulation.

Tommy didn’t ask him how he planned to get up the stairs without his cane, and Alfie refused to be grateful for the discretion. He wasn’t precisely sure the cane would be enough at this point, anyhow.

“John’s probably got a tin or two of Maconochie stashed away in his car,” Tommy said finally, resting his shoulders against the wall next to Alfie, arms crossed over his chest. “If you’re hungry, I mean.”

Alfie couldn’t tell whether it was a serious offer. “Yeah. Just what I was dreaming about whilst all those meals passed us by. Fucking Maconochie.”

One of Tommy’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “You mentioned steak, so I thought--”

“You thought rations, did you?” Alfie tentatively put his full weight on his bad leg and instantly regretted the experiment. “I mention steak and your mind goes to turnip soup? Tommy, I hate to break it to you, but--”

“It’s not so bad.” And now Alfie knew for certain that Tommy Shelby was certifiable.

“Not bad? Not bad? I’d rather have the fucking horsemeat they tried to pass off as stew than ever eat that shit again, mate. Not bad. Fuck.”

The sheen of humor was back, barely there but identifiable now that Alfie was familiar with a few more shades of his expressionlessness.

Tommy didn’t offer to help Alfie up the stairs himself, which was for the fucking best, really, because if he had Alfie would have had to kill him, wouldn’t he. Instead he just waited until Alfie could put some pressure on his foot without needing to scream, and then shortened his stride to follow Alfie’s halting progress around the perimeter of the room to the staircase, where he could use the rail to haul himself up the steps, one at a fucking time.

After they crossed through the door at the top of the stairs Alfie let himself take a break. Tommy dug in his coat pockets and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a box of matches, which the Kitchens had apparently overlooked in their search for weapons, but which he hadn’t been able to reach bound. Alfie watched him light up and shook his head when Tommy offered the pack to him.

“We still in London, d’you think?” Tommy asked, once he’d smoked most of his cigarette. Under his coat, the line of his shoulders had eased a notch or two.

“Your guess is as good as mine, innit. Had a sack over my head the whole trip.”

“Hmm.” Tommy dropped the butt to the floor and stubbed it out with his shoe.

Alfie found he could walk without clutching at any walls, but it was still slow going.

“Why, you got plans for this fine evening?”

“I had plans in London two nights ago, but I suspect I never showed.” There was an odd note in his voice, pensive and almost tender. “I’ll have to make a call,” he said to himself, distracted-like, then glanced sidelong at Alfie and his face closed up again.

Alfie hadn’t found anything in his research to suggest Tommy Shelby was fucking  anyone but his secretary, but made a note of it nevertheless. For future reference.

“Your people have rules around food, mate? Any dietary restrictions?”

“Some.” Tommy turned a glimmer of surprise on him and didn’t elaborate.

“Well, if we are in London, I know a place serves a proper steak. Kosher, and none of your turnip slop to be had.”

After all of the excitement it turned out they had been kept in the cellar of a perfectly normal, if abandoned, house. There were even neat curtains still hung in the windows, weren’t there, like the former residents had just gone out and planned to be back any minute. Whatever furniture had been left in the place was matchsticks and there was a smashed lamp in one corner, near an empty fireplace. A kid's fucking toy horse had been left on the mantle.

“You do eat, yeah?” Alfie asked, as they picked their way through the detritus of the fights that had been their conflicting rescue attempts. Alfie supposed the pace he’d set would be excruciating to anyone with two good legs, or to an unhealthy snail, even, but Tommy made no remark, just kept abreast of him and kicked aside shards of what must have been crockery as he went. 

“On occasion.”

“Well, you’ll have to clean up first, mate, because the owner, see, she’s an elderly lady, and resembling the abattoir as you do presently, you’re sure to give her a heart attack.”

Tommy just stared at him for a beat, then nodded. “If we are in London,” he said, hand on the knob of the front door, “I could stop by my sister’s and make myself more presentable.” Then he opened the door.

The street outside was wholly unfamiliar to Alfie but looked completely, cosily inappropriate to the events of the previous few days. The neighbors were most likely huddling behind their windows, peeping out at the two sets of men milling about still giving each other the evil eye. Which meant the inevitable call to the coppers, didn’t it, if they weren’t already on their way.

He followed Tommy out of the house and into the evening, his bad leg making promises he didn’t quite believe to carry him as far as one of the cars before it gave up on him completely. If they were in London, he’d need to change his suit before he ventured into any kind of decent establishment. If they were in London, someone was going to have to carry him into the steakhouse bodily. Maybe he could stop on the way and have his leg fucking amputated first.

Alfie scanned the crowd as John Shelby stepped forward to have a word with his brother, handing over a flask which Tommy accepted without comment. There was a ginger giant tied up next to what must have been one of the Shelby cars, guarded by two pissed off Peakies. For all the noise and fuss, not one Kitchen seemed to have met his maker. Shame, really.

Tommy knocked back a swallow from the flask and grimaced at the burn of whatever cheap spirit was inside before slipping it into his jacket pocket.

“Alright,” he said, turning to Alfie. His face was an impressive array of color by that point, nearly unrecognizable under all the dried and flaking blood. He also looked about as ready to drop as Alfie felt. “Give me the address.”

“Address?”

“You mentioned steak. Was that just talk?”

Alfie blinked. “So we’re in London after all?”

“Near enough.” Whatever that meant.

Alfie pulled out his pocket watch and was somewhat astonished to see it was only just past eight. “She closes up shop at eleven, on the dot, no exceptions, not even for loyal customers such as myself. You’ll make it there by ten?”

“Depends on where it is, I suspect.”

Alfie rattled off the address. Tommy gave him a short nod and turned without further word towards his brother.

“You want me to drive you home now, boss?” Daniel asked. Eli was holding a handkerchief to his nose, still shooting daggers at Tommy Shelby’s back as it disappeared into one of the cars.

“Eventually, mate, eventually.” Alfie said, contemplating the complex series of steps it was going to require to haul himself up into his own car. “The path to paradise begins in hell, right? Got a quick meeting first.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Nick Cave’s “Idiot Prayer” from The Boatman’s Call which is a Tommy/Alfie song if there ever was one.
> 
> At the end, Alfie quotes Dante Alighieri — 'The path to paradise begins in hell.' He's also apparently a fan of Gulliver's Travels.
> 
> Romani dialogue from the [Romani Dictionary: Kalderash - English, by Ronald Lee](https://books.google.com/books?id=qHGoiNjIIBkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false).


End file.
